Should I Bother Wasting My Time With Final Fantasy 13?

Basically my friend and I decided to trade games temporarily to save on money (times are hard, it's still a recession), so I gave him my God of War 3 and he gave me his Final Fantasy 13(FF13).

I must say FF13, is one of the most painful games to play. I am only a few hours into it but it is very difficult to force myself to go on. It almost seems like a chore to play. The plot is boring and generic, the characters are not likable at all (Hope pisses me off every time he opens his mouth). Those are some of the minor things that annoy me about this game mainly because gameplay is the most important part.

One saying that is very true, especially when it comes to games is "if it aint broke don't fix it". This saying explains how I feel about the gameplay and gameplay mechanics in FF13. First of all it is one of the most linear games I have played in a while and I know that I have said that I don't mind linearity in platforming games but in RPG's it's a totally different ball game. I want to be able to explore and do side missions and have a larger area to do my grinding, I can't walk in a straight line for the whole game, especially in an RPG. It puzzles me why the developers have made this game so linear. More importantly, I really hate how you can only control the party leader, why can't I control the rest of my party? I just find it stupid. It really grinds my gears that Square Enix tries to make the gameplay more simple by making it more complicated. With all the auto battling and paradigm shifts and nonsense, it seems like there is a tutorial every couple of minutes in this game. If they truly want to move away from turn base combat why don't they make the battle system more similar to the system in Kingdom Hearts. If not, just go back to traditional turn based combat because these new systems that they develop are getting progressively worse. I have realized this is a general trend with Final Fantasy games after FF10. The series itself has been getting progressively worse , so I am not surprised FF13 is one of the worst RPG's I have played in a long time.